Different Christians read different Bible translations. Some believe that only one translation is right and condemn other translations as allegedly wrong.
Luther and the translators of the King James Bible included John 8:1-11. They also recognised and translated Mark 16:9-20 as Scripture.
Many modern translators claim that both passages are questionable because they are not found in the supposedly best manuscripts. In some modern translations, the two passages are included but a footnote warns readers that they are not found in some of the best manuscripts. Otherwise they may be omitted but added as footnotes.
I am not a Bible scholar. I studied literature at university. I am interested in the thematic structure of texts.
What are the important ideas in both of these two controversial passages?
In both passages, women are not taken seriously by the spiritual leaders. In both passages, sexist men are rebuked by Jesus himself.
In John 8, pious Jewish men brought to Jesus a woman they had caught committing a sexual sin. They wanted Jesus to order her stoned to death, because the Old Testament law required it.
Jesus was outraged that these men were so unjust. Where was the man who had sinned with this woman?
Jesus exposed this hypocritical injustice, forgave the woman, and saved her life.
Mark 16 tells us that the first witness to Jesus' resurrection was not one of the apostles but a woman, Mary Magdalene. This was certainly no accident. God himself had chosen this woman to be a witness.
Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons.
She went and told those who had been with Him, as they mourned and wept.
And when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe. Mk 16:9–11 NKJV
In John 8 the unrighteous leaders were religious Jews. In Mark 16, the unrighteous men were the apostles whom Jesus himself had appointed as his leaders!
Later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. Mk 16:14 NKJV
In the first centuries after the apostles, who compiled the supposedly best manuscripts of the Bible? The scribes and church fathers.
There may have been doubts about these passages for two reasons. One is that they may have been added to the original writings of Mark and John. This does not necessarily invalidate them. Deuteronomy was written by Moses, but the last section was added after Moses died.
The other reason is that both passages show how male leaders made unjust judgements against women, and Jesus rebuked the men.
The church fathers and scribes had the task of examining the manuscripts of John and Mark. They had to judge the different copies and decide which versions were authentic.
I think it was inconceivable to some of these men that Jesus would have respected women more than male spiritual leader. That could be precisely why these two passages were omitted from some highly respected manuscripts.
On the other hand, most of the scribes were probably men, and the passages were therefore probably included by men. Sexist distortion of Bible translations can be a problem, but not all male editors or translators twist the text.
The sexism of the early church fathers is not hard to find. In some of the writings of the church fathers, women were openly vilified because of Eve's first sin.
However, there is another reason to confirm the authenticity of these disputed passages, namely the thematic and literary structure of the Gospels of Mark and John. I will explain this in my next blog post.
Luther and the King James translators accepted this passage as authentic. I am not saying that these older translations are better than modern translations in every way. There are other places in the Bible where these old translations are gender biased, but that is not the subject of this post.
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